Pity Carl Icahn. The biotech industry’s best-known activist shareholder and chairman of ImClone Systems Inc. saw the value of his holdings plummet following the Food & Drug Administration’s 2001 rejection of its lead cancer drug, the EGFR inhibitor cetuximab (Erbitux), and the succeeding insider-trading scandal that sent CEO Sam Waksal to jail. He then saw his shares climb, once Erbitux reached the market, to historic highs, past $85 a share–before plummeting again in the summer of 2004 when sales numbers fell below expectations.
And the stock never really recovered. Although Erbitux did well enough commercially, ImClone investors could see no other real exit...